A Planet With The Most Beautiful Sunset

Astronomers have discovered a planet with an exotic sight on its horizon: a triple sunset.
The planet, HD 131399Ab is a gas giant in a system with three stars some 320 light years away in the Centaurus Constellation. The main star it orbits is nearly twice as massive as the sun. The other two stars in the system are smaller and much closer together. They move around each other like a spinning dumbbell.

Astronomers found the planet using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in northern Chile. It is the first exoplanet with a wide orbit ever found within a triple star system, they reported Thursday in the journal Science.

HD 131399Ab is only about 16 million years old, which makes it one of the youngest exoplanets ever discovered. It is also about four times as massive as Jupiter and has temperatures that reach more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That may seem extreme, but as far as exoplanets go, HD 131399Ab is one of the least massive and coldest ever found — despite all the sunshine it receives.